Getting stuck in your own story
I have this thing that I do whenever I accept a new friend request on Facebook: I pull up my own profile and study it, trying to imagine what the new person will think of me as they view my online image for the first time.
What will they think of my family?
(I like my family. I’d like my new friends to know my family.)What will they think of our wedding photos?
(Our wedding was awesome. It might be better if nobody takes a photo of me dancing ever again, though.)Will they read that long, personal post I wrote four months ago?
(Ah I hope they don’t. It’s kind of discomforting when people you only kind of know read something like that. Maybe I should take it down.)Will they get far enough back to consider whether or not I was cool in high school?
(Probably not. I mean, they’d have to click back through a lot of photos to get this far. On the other hand, I just clicked through to 2009, so I guess there’s a chance. Shoot, junior year homecoming was rough.)Was I cool in high school?
(I guess not. I remember feeling good about those sunglasses, but in retrospect they made me look like an adolescent praying mantis.)
Yeah, I literally just did this, for no good reason I can think of.
I mean, I don’t post on Facebook anymore. I don’t really use Facebook anymore. My profile is static, stamped with a smiling profile picture of Alli and I at the beach and a mountainside cover photo so people know I live in a cool place. I haven’t posted anything in four months.
There’s really no point in looking at my profile ever again. Right?
Right.
But still. Every time I get an email notification that somebody’s added me, I jump into action like it’s the bat signal. And every time I accept a new friend, I lean up to my digital mirror with a pageant judge’s eye, obsessing over how my reflection will come off.
Again and again.
I’m not entirely sure why. But I think part of it is that in trying to understand how other people might perceive me, I’m trying to understand who I actually am.
I want to know what role I’m playing in the world. I want to know what my story is.
And I want who I am to matter.
Last night, our small group read through the The Magnificat – that song-prayer that spills from Mary in the Gospel of Luke, right after the angel Gabriel bursts in to deliver the axis-shifting news about Jesus.
My soul magnifies the Lord,
and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
for he has looked on the humble estate of his servant.
For behold, from now on all generations will call me blessed.
Luke 1:46-48
It’s a beautiful prayer. As she offers it, Mary seems keenly aware of her own insignificance. She knows the role she’s played; she’s not impressive. She’s a servant of lowly estate. She’s a nobody. That’s how the world sees her. That, it appears, is how she sees herself.
Then, without warning, she’s chosen. She’s exalted. She’s pulled in, caught up, eclipsed.
In all this, Mary’s place in society only gets smaller. She’ll be shunned for becoming pregnant before being married. But her story is swallowed up in a bigger one, and it reaches to the ancient past to make true God’s promises to Abraham, and it stretches to eternity to save us.
So the power of God overshadows her, and her soul magnifies the Lord.
This, I think, is one of the gifts that Jesus brings.
When he comes, we understand the smallness of our stories. We are eclipsed, and so our stories cease to be dead ends.
Thank God.
Because God knows there is probably no end more dead than looking at your own Facebook profile, nothing smaller-minded than scrolling through pictures of yourself and trying to figure out what other people might think of you for the third time this week.
I am so desperate to be impressive. I am an awkward dancer and a praying mantis when I wear sunglasses. I am so self-conscious and so small.
I am eclipsed. What a gift.
Updates
Alli and I are traveling back to Maryland for Christmas, and I’m planning to take the week off from writing / doing almost everything. I’ll be back in 2023 (hopefully with music to follow soon).
Here’s wishing you Merry Christmas and happy holidays. Thanks, as always, for reading.